I have a THD that I got in 2009 - I used winmfs to upgrade the unit with a 1 TB drive at that time. Last night I got the Welcome! Powering Up screen forever so I figured it may be the HDD, so I replaced it with the original 160 GB drive and it worked. So I would like to put another upgrade drive in it but would like to use 2 TB this time.

From another thread I gather that Comer's jmfs rev 104 would work for that purpose. It that correct? Also, is there any chance I could use the failed drive to to the upgrade such as rich14au did for a Premiere unit? Or should I use the 160 GB original drive to do so? But if I do this I will not have the latest TIVO software, correct? I really don't care about recordings on the failed drive.

I would like to order a WD AV-GP 2 TB drive today to get here for the weekend if possible so any inputs or suggestions welcomed.

I have a THD that I got in 2009 - I used winmfs to upgrade the unit with a 1 TB drive at that time. Last night I got the Welcome! Powering Up screen forever so I figured it may be the HDD, so I replaced it with the original 160 GB drive and it worked. So I would like to put another upgrade drive in it but would like to use 2 TB this time.

From another thread I gather that Comer's jmfs rev 104 would work for that purpose. It that correct? Also, is there any chance I could use the failed drive to to the upgrade such as rich14au did for a Premiere unit? Or should I use the 160 GB original drive to do so? But if I do this I will not have the latest TIVO software, correct? I really don't care about recordings on the failed drive.

I would like to order a WD AV-GP 2 TB drive today to get here for the weekend if possible so any inputs or suggestions welcomed.

Thanks

Suggest you get a WD20EURS--should be available for under $100 with free shipping from newegg and/or Amazon

Also suggest that you let that original 160 run in there until it downloads and installs the latest version of the TiVo operating system software, 11.0m, unless it's already at least up to 11.0h.

"h" or later will let you use WinMFS to utilize the entire 2TB and skip jmfs.

Nothing against comer, mind you. jmfs was a laudable acheivement.

The System Information page in the TiVo menus will show you what version of the software is on that 160GB now.

Do you know how to burn an .iso file to a cd-r "as an image", so that if it's supposed to be bootable the file structure will be right for it to be so?

go to the bottom of the page to where it says "mirror sites" and to the immediate left of the names of the various sites there are one or more icons of the type used in the early days of Macs and Windows to indicate drives.

Click on one of those icons to download the UBCD .iso

It has diagnostic software from the major manufacturers.

You're going to want to run the long test on the 2TB before putting it into service (I know it'll be brand new, but stuff happens), and we can take a shot at seeing if the stuff on the 1TB is salvageable as well.

If you don't have a voltmeter, borrow one and check out the outputs of the power supply while you have the lid off of the TiVo, as there's an excellent chance of "capacitor plague" any time now.

After we figure out which drive to copy to the 2TB, you need to say no when it offers to expand, and then do the expansion as a separate step.

go to the bottom of the page to where it says "mirror sites" and to the immediate left of the names of the various sites there are one or more icons of the type used in the early days of Macs and Windows to indicate drives.

Click on one of those icons to download the UBCD .iso

It has diagnostic software from the major manufacturers.

You're going to want to run the long test on the 2TB before putting it into service (I know it'll be brand new, but stuff happens), and we can take a shot at seeing if the stuff on the 1TB is salvageable as well.

If you don't have a voltmeter, borrow one and check out the outputs of the power supply while you have the lid off of the TiVo, as there's an excellent chance of "capacitor plague" any time now.

After we figure out which drive to copy to the 2TB, you need to say no when it offers to expand, and then do the expansion as a separate step.

I will let the 160 stay in there until it gets to the proper SW. I used WINMFS before to do my upgrades so I will order the WD HDD and do it that way. Thank you for the info. I will post back after I do the upgrade.

I will let the 160 stay in there until it gets to the proper SW. I used WINMFS before to do my upgrades so I will order the WD HDD and do it that way. Thank you for the info. I will post back after I do the upgrade.

Unitron

I already ordered enough 2200 uF 16V Caps for my 3 THD units, so what voltage should I look for when I check to indicate a problem with the Caps?

I already ordered enough 2200 uF 16V Caps for my 3 THD units, so what voltage should I look for when I check to indicate a problem with the Caps?

The black wires are ground, but if you've got an alligator clip on your meter's negative lead you can just clip it to the side of the chassis over on the side farthest (furthest?) away from the power supply.

The yellow wire is supposed to be +12 V DC, relative to ground.

The red wire is supposed to be +5 V DC

The orange wire is supposed to be +3.3 V DC

In reality, they likely won't read exactly those numbers, but the 12 V line should be within 0.5 Volts or so, plus or minus, and the 5 V maybe a little closer than that, and the 3.3 maybe 3.1 to 3.5

And the readings should be similar with or without the hard drive attached.

EDIT:

I don't remember off the top of my head if it's the original S3 (the 648) or the HD/HD XL (652/658) supply that has a 25 V 2200uF right next to a couple of 16V 2200uFs, but if they spent the extra money for a 25 in that location, don't replace it with a 16.

I let the 160 GB HDD update to 11m SW and I paired my MCARD with FIOS and everything was working as of yesterday and I was waiting for my new 2 TB HDD so I could upgrade the unit - as I mentioned above originally I had the Welcome Powering Up screen earlier and replaced the 1 TB drive with the original 160 GB and the system worked for a few days.

Today when I got home this afternoon the THD was locked into the Welcome Powering Up screen again with the 160 in there, so I am guessing the problem is the PS, RIGHT?

I checked voltages with everything still connected (and the Welcome Powering Up screen still on) and got 12.5 VDC, 3.3 VDC, and 4.8 VDC.

Should I start replacing Caps? Or is there something else I should go?

Always good to check the capacitors. I had a similar problem recently with my OLED S3. After a power failure when it rebooted it stuck on the "Powering Up" screen. It even got so far as the KS portal but never flipped to the next screen. Could enter a KS code and it acted like it would accept it but never did a KS function. I flipped booting partitions, copied the OS over from a known good drive. Nothing seem to work. I can only surmise that something got corrupted in the MFS someplace when the power went off and when the OS boots, it needs whatever is in the MFS to move on to the next level. It never gets it so it stays put. Ended up redoing the drive completely and it is back functioning again.

The power supply had good voltages with and without load. Had replaced the caps about a year ago.

My recommendation is to reimage the drive.

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I let the 160 GB HDD update to 11m SW and I paired my MCARD with FIOS and everything was working as of yesterday and I was waiting for my new 2 TB HDD so I could upgrade the unit - as I mentioned above originally I had the Welcome Powering Up screen earlier and replaced the 1 TB drive with the original 160 GB and the system worked for a few days.

Today when I got home this afternoon the THD was locked into the Welcome Powering Up screen again with the 160 in there, so I am guessing the problem is the PS, RIGHT?

I checked voltages with everything still connected (and the Welcome Powering Up screen still on) and got 12.5 VDC, 3.3 VDC, and 4.8 VDC.

Should I start replacing Caps? Or is there something else I should go?

Thanks again

Those voltage readings are in the ballpark, so unless there's considerable variation in them with and without the hard drive attached, I'd say it's probably not the power supply.

Let us know when you get the 2TB and we can hook you up with an image to put on it just for test purposes.

Also, some of the discussions of 648 power supplies have cap lists, with either Digi-Key or Mouser part numbers, and a, for example 16V 2200uF cap for a 648 and a 16V 2200uF cap for a 652 or 658 are the same cap.

Hello! My Series 3 is stuck in Welcome! Powering up...screen. When I unplug and replug, I hear whirring noises followed by clicking a few times, then it stops. I think I lost electricity yesterday and found it stuck in this screen when I got home. I already replaced the power supply less than a year ago. Is this a hard drive failure? I am pretty clueless about these things so any help would be appreciated. I am not sure what to do next. Thanks!!!

Hello! My Series 3 is stuck in Welcome! Powering up...screen. When I unplug and replug, I hear whirring noises followed by clicking a few times, then it stops. I think I lost electricity yesterday and found it stuck in this screen when I got home. I already replaced the power supply less than a year ago. Is this a hard drive failure? I am pretty clueless about these things so any help would be appreciated. I am not sure what to do next. Thanks!!!

If it's not the power supply, it is almost certainly the hard drive. Is it the original? Are you comfortable using something like WinMFS to build a new drive and installing it? It's not hard if you have messed with PC hard drives and have a PC available. -- Doug

Thanks, Doug, for responding. Unfortunately, I have never dealt with PC hard drives. I have a MacBook Pro laptop. As far as I know, it is the original hard drive. I bought it used off a friend. I have no idea what WinMFS is-is that a sign that I should give up on this ever starting up again? Repeated unplugging is not doing the trick. Ugh. This stinks!

Thanks, Doug, for responding. Unfortunately, I have never dealt with PC hard drives. I have a MacBook Pro laptop. As far as I know, it is the original hard drive. I bought it used off a friend. I have no idea what WinMFS is-is that a sign that I should give up on this ever starting up again? Repeated unplugging is not doing the trick. Ugh. This stinks!

Did you replace the TiVo's power supply yourself?

Either way, where did the new supply come from?

(WinMFS is a program that runs on Windows PCs, there is no Mac version)

-is that a sign that I should give up on this ever starting up again? Repeated unplugging is not doing the trick. Ugh. This stinks!

There is hope, but it will cost you. For the easiest path, you can buy a hard drive from Weaknees with the Tivo software pre-loaded (make sure you specify your specific model). Then all you have to do is swap out the hard drive.

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There is hope, but it will cost you. For the easiest path, you can buy a hard drive from Weaknees with the Tivo software pre-loaded (make sure you specify your specific model). Then all you have to do is swap out the hard drive.

If your S3 doesn't have lifetime, you might consider getting a new Roamio instead. It looks like a smallish drive from Weaknees is $130 and a new Roamio with the same capacity is $200. -- Doug

Thanks, everyone. I bought the power supply from Weaknees less than a year ago. My cousin swapped it out for me. Been working great until I lost electricity. I do have lifetime on this box. If I were to get the new hard drive preloaded, is it hard to swap out myself? I assume I lost all my programs on this one. Thanks for all your help!

Yes, I do have to send them the old TiVo. How can I know for sure they are responsible? My house did lose electricity and it never came back from that. Every time I tried, I would hear the clicking noises from the box. The timing seems likely that it would happen after a power outage.
I did search the internet, however, since they are transferring my lifetime service, I didn't think it would be worth getting another box from an unknown source.
My internet is always on so hopefully that won't be an issue.
Thanks for all of your thoughts! Appreciate it!

Yes, I do have to send them the old TiVo. How can I know for sure they are responsible? My house did lose electricity and it never came back from that. Every time I tried, I would hear the clicking noises from the box. The timing seems likely that it would happen after a power outage.
I did search the internet, however, since they are transferring my lifetime service, I didn't think it would be worth getting another box from an unknown source.
My internet is always on so hopefully that won't be an issue.
Thanks for all of your thoughts! Appreciate it!

You can ask them straight out if your TCD652160 was one of the ones to which they mistakenly sent the software "upgrade" to 11.3.

If they say no, ask them why they're willing to do what they ordinarily no longer do, transfer lifetime, and why they need hardware that's beyond economical repair returned to them.

If they say yes, ask them why you should have to pay a single dime since your TiVo was working fine until they broke it.

And ask them if they mistakenly sent the software upgrade to anyone whose S3 HD was not lifetimed.

Ok, so I called TiVo back to pose the questions Unitron suggested. By the way, I knew nothing about the bad software update until you told me to ask about it, so thank you for that. That was not the model# of my box; mine ended in 250B. They said I did not get that update. According to my account, the last update I got was 11.0. They said anyone who got that update got an email letting them know about the bad update. The person on the phone said he honestly could not answer the reason why I was able to have my lifetime service transferred. He seemed genuine. He thought the reason why I had to return the box was to prove I wasn't just giving a good box away to someone else. At this point, I have no reason to believe it just didn't die from the power outage. It stinks, but I guess it happens. I lost a lot of shows. Ugh.

So, I just got the new one last night. Hopefully, I won't have any trouble getting it set up. Thanks for your input! I really do appreciate it, especially since you brought up things I knew nothing about!